xxviij FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 53 



answer. For instance, he says, ' the principal doctrines of 

 Christianity were held at the beginning as now.' True, but 

 what was that beginning ? and ivhere did the doctrines and 

 dogmas of Christianity spring up ? It was in the very focus 

 of all the highest and most ancient civilizations of the world 

 — the Jewish, the Egyptian, the Assyrian, the Greek, and the 

 Roman. These peoples had already gone through the long 

 process of mental development which the savage has not even 

 begun. The doctrines (of Christianity) grew among them, 

 as they do not grow among savages, because they were adapted 

 to the mental state in the one case, but are not in the other. 



" What savage nations have (as he asserts) been raised out 

 of their degradation by Christianity ? The Abyssinians are 

 a good case to show that Christianity alone does nothing. 

 The circumstances have not been favourable to the growth of 

 civilization in Abyssinia, and therefore, though they have had 

 Christianity as long as we have (or longer), they are scarcely 

 equal morally to many pagan and certainly inferior to some 

 Mohammedan nations. This is a crucial instance. 



" He says the Britons did not arrive at any ' great moral 

 elevation ' under the Romans. But will he point out any 

 savages who have arrived at a ' great moral elevation ' in the 

 same time under Christianity ? I know of none. No doubt 

 there has been often a superficial improvement, as in some 

 of the South Sea islands ; but it is an open question how 

 much of that is due to the purely moral influence of a higher 

 and more civilized race. 



■ Of course, if you claim all virtue as Christian virtue, and 

 impute all want of goodness to want of true Christianity, you 

 may prove the value of any religion. The Mohammedan 

 argues exactly the same (see Lady Duff Gordon's ' Letters 

 from Egypt')- Your friend would no doubt impute whatever 

 scraps of goodness there may exist in myself to the Christianity 

 in which I was educated ; but I know and feel (though it 

 would no doubt shock him to hear) that I acted from lower 

 motives than I do now, and that I was really inferior 

 morally as a Christian than I am now as, what he would 

 call, an infidel. 



